Volume 15 , Issue 6

Scott Cummins - Pilgrim Bard

The following concerning Scott Cummins, the Pilgrim Bard of Northwest Oklahoma, appeared in Vol. 4, 2002, of The OkieLegacy Ezine and was furnished to the OkieLegacy Ezine by a descendant of Scott Cummins.

Scott Cummins, The Pilgrim Bard

Joan (Wagner) Hodgden and a descendant of Cummins were both members of the Woods County Genealogy Group that had gone on a bus trip to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1982. Joan told about the article she had written.

George I. Cummins was born in Washington County, Maryland, and Mary Ann Clyde Cummins was born in Pennsylvania according to the census reports. Maryland was listed in George's newspaper obituary.

Xenia is in Greene County, Ohio. Harrison County was almost always listed as the Pilgrim Bard's place of birth. The person who sent me this information was not sure where Xenia came from.

George I. Cummins was a minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and does not mention Indians; but that doesn't mean they didn't play a part in Scott's upbringing. There is an article that George had published in the Wesleyan Journal that details one of his trips to members of the church in north central Iowa and he lists who he saw and where he stayed since he was gone for several months. Also, a researcher in Paola did not find any information about George Cummins being an active minister after moving there. She believed he was retired. George may have wbeen ill about that time (possible a stroke) soon after moving there.

Some believe George and Mary never moved to Barber County, Kansas. It was probably Scott's wandering that brought him there. After George died in 1890 in Paola, Mary Ann moved to the Pilgrim Bard's home and lived with him until she died. George was buried in the cemetery at Paola.

Joan mentions in her article that "Donald" was a son. Some wonder if that is the boy that Scott and Mary Ann reportedly adopted while in Paola when the "Orphan Train" went through.

The Pilgrim Bard wrote a lengthy story that was published in the Nescatunga Enterprise titled: "Conception, Birth and Early Days of Nescatunga" and dated Saturday, May 8, 1886. We would really like to find a copy of this 1886 article about Nescatunga. We are still searching, but if anyone out there has a copy we would like to share it in the "OkieLegacy."

Scott Cummins - Soldier, Bone Peddler, Adventurer, Poet & Maker of Own Legend

[Joan Hodgden's - 1975 Scott Cummins article] originally appeared in the Alva (Okla.) Review-Courier Progress Edition 1972, written by Joan Wagner Hodgden (my husband's older sister).]

We know about the virtues that a pioneer must have: a love of adventure, courage in the face of adversity, adaptability, perseverance and just plain grit. But we sometimes leave out a characteristic many of them possessed in a great degree, namely sensitivity to the things around them. This is often revealed to us by a line in a diary; a phrase in an old letter; or a few words scrawled in a bible.

On of Alva's early settlers left us a whole book revealing his awareness of our mutual surroundings. This man was Scott Cummins, soldier, farmer, adventurer, bone peddler, and maker of his own legend as the undisputed poet of these plains. When he made the Run into Woods County on September 16, 1893, settling near the community of Winchester, Scott Cummins had already been a successful farmer and rancher from the Medicine Lodge area, and an early developer in several Kansas communities. He also had won the reputation as a "Pilgrim Bard" of that area, but the spirit and love of adventure that had impelled him during his past career also brought him here to help open the Cherokee Strip.

Orange Scott Cummins was the son of parents imbued with a sense of mission. His father, a Methodist minister named George Irving Cummins, was a native of Scotland, and his mother, Mary Ann Clyde Cummins, a native of Ireland. They married in Scotland and left for the United States, where they were to spend 55 years in the ministry moving around the new, and sometimes-raw American West. Scott was born in Xenia, Harrison County, Ohio on May 12, 1846, but went with his parents as a toddler to northeastern Iowa. It was here in a small frontier village that Scott not only met his first Indians, but also grew up with them, playing their games, learning their customs, and obviously loving every minute of it. He was so taken with the glamour of Indian life that he afterwards incorporated these Indian friends, last survivors, he claimed, of the Mesquoquie tribe, into a romance, which he later claimed as his own. The hero of this tale was Cono, a gallant Indian Chief who, upon hearing of the tragic loss of a baby son by a white woman of the settlement, left on her doorstep a little Indian papoose to be raised as her own. Cummins liked to think that he was that baby, and even in later life affected the dress of the Indian frontier scout.

Scott's growing up took place during times of trouble and change in the United States. He was only fifteen years old when the Civil War started. Nevertheless he tried to enlist immediately in the Union Army, but was refused until he reached the ripe old age of seventeen. In February of 1864 he was taken into Company A of the 3rd Iowa Cavalry. His Civil War exploits included volunteering for dangerous scouting duty behind enemy lines. Perhaps his early Indian games helped him here, and he said that at times the Union uniform was not the only one he was obliged to wear.

After the end of the war and mustering out, he married Mary Melinda Martin in Iowa, but soon left that state to settle in Kansas where his parents had been sent in another step in their long journeying for the Methodist ministry. Scott Cummins was to be an influence in several Kansas communities, but was perhaps most active at Wellington, Kansas, where as one of the early developers he served as Justice of the Peace and was also for a time the proprietor of the Frontier House, Wellington's early hotel. However, when his parents were sent into less settled Barber County, (Kansas) Scott and his wandering spirit followed to the area where both challenge and fortune beckoned. It was in Barber County that he was to find contentment and fame as a poet.

In 1874, after a decade of wandering, including the war, Cummins settled in Barber County near the post office of Lodi. Times were hard; these were years of depression and panic, of arguments over gold or silver currency, and nature was also hard, sending years of drought to farmers just wanting to make a start. The Indian raids were not over, either, and it took a good deal of courage not to mention just plain stubbornness to stay in such a country. Cummins stayed and was named U.S. Marshall there. In the back of his dugout was a room dug into the bank behind it where he stored the arsenal of guns to be used by the settlers during an Indian raid. He obtained from a disgruntled settler a claim about five miles from Lodi by trading for it a team of horses and a corn planter he had picked up somewhere. The hard times convinced him that a corn planter would never be of use in Kansas. The old settler took out and Scott settled down to make a living for his family on the farm by Mule Creek. Grandfather Cummins when asked to comment about Scott's move, responded by naming the cabin he built there "Last Chance" - the last chance (then) for a settler to get a good hot meal on his way west.

To make a living, Scott had to do more than just work on the farm, and so he became a Bone Pilgrim, a gatherer of old buffalo bones, undoubtedly, a profession unique to the Western Plains. The great slaughter of the American Bison, or buffalo, had already taken place, and their bones were left to bleach on the prairie. These bones made good fertilizer when powdered, and burned. Powdered bone ash was also used in ceramics and in cleaning and polishing compounds. It was this gathering job that gave Scott time to observe and respond to the scene around him, and which also took him down into the Cherokee Outlet (popularly known as the Cherokee Strip) to find the ones there. He became familiar on these trips with the Woods County area, and it was here when camping at night, perhaps on Eagle Chief Creek, that he would by the light of campfire and moon put down his thoughts and poetry. He wrote on the materials available - the broad blade of a buffalo knife, or even a piece of soft, flat gypsum. He rarely, if ever, even before publishing, altered or corrected a piece.

These musings came to the attention of a Medicine Lodge newspaper editor, Tom McNeal, who not only printed them, but also encouraged Scott to publish. It was he who renamed Scott, who usually referred to himself as just a "Bone Pilgrim", as the Pilgrim Bard, a wanderer who sang the praises of the nature he loved. Scott's volume of poetry, published in 1903 when he was living at Winchester, Woods County, was to be titled "Musings of the Pilgrim Bard." A copy of this book was presented to President Theodore Roosevelt, and he, a long time enthusiast for the West, wrote of his approval and delight in the volume.

Scott Cummins' adventurism spirit might have led him to join the Run of the great opening of the Cherokee Strip even if he hadn't suffered from an unfortunate occurrence at this time, but the Run must have proved irresistible coming just when it did. On July 4, 1893, while the Cummins family was away celebrating the 4th in the usual picnic style at Mann's Grove, Kansas, the family's home and possessions burned to the ground. A firecracker probably started the fire. The loss included the poet's manuscripts, his historical notes, relics and library, and so was a double blow.

Cummins and his son-in-law, Tom Dyer, who had been a cowboy for the Gregory Eldred Ranch Company, were familiar with the Cherokee Strip country, and Dyer had even surveyed the country in 1891 with the purpose of picking out a location to settle when the Strip was opened. He selected four claims in the same general area, one of which he recommended to Scott Cummins. However, on the day of the Opening when Cummins was encamped near the OE Ranch Headquarters in Barber County, close to Hardtner, he discovered that J. E. Fritzlen and some others from Lake City, Kansas, had brought down racehorses to run for the same section. Mr. Cummins was in a wagon and knew he couldn't beat these fine horses to the place both men wanted. Cummins and his companions decided to stay in the race, however, and when the starting gun sounded, they took their wagon down to the old trail leading to Camp Supply. They then followed it to the Salt Fork, and after crossing there, staked a claim on the west side. They thus became members of the Winchester community, established by Jonathan C. Fuller, who set up a grocery store and Post Office on his claim. Both of these gentlemen were veterans of the Civil War and they enjoyed reminiscing at the store. Mr. Fuller had served with General Grant and Mr. Cummins, of course, told of his scouting experiences. Mr. Fuller, incidentally, named Winchester, for the place in Virginia where General Sheridan started his famous ride. Mr. Cummins named his farm Pilgrim Valley.

It was also at Winchester that Scott Cummins prepared his volumes for publication. Besides "Musings of a Pilgrim Bard," they included the Indian Tale of "OWAANEO (Pale Flower)," "Twilight Reveries," "Shadows and Sunshine," and "The Spy."

Mr. Cummins was active in both the development of Woods County and that of Alva, serving as U.S. Land Commissioner for six years, and as Bailiff of the District Court of Woods County under Judge J. L. Pancoast.

Scott Cummins resided at his Winchester home until his death on March 21, 1928. His wife, Mary, had preceded him in death January 24, 1903. Her grave is still located on a high knoll just west of the Winchester homestead.

The children of these pioneer parents included Ralla and Dwight, both of whom died in infancy. Walter Scott, Nina Canema, and Donald, Dewey Dwight all resided in Woods County as adults, as did Daisy Lorn Cummins, who later went to live in Colorado.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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